The Russian free jazz innovator and members of the CalArts Improvisation Ensemble weave together a series of new collaborative multimedia works developed using Stolyar’s unique “Improvising Orchestra” methodology. In a continuance of their ongoing collaboration, Chase and Allen join Stolyar, forging ahead into uncharted aesthetic territory. This project was first begun in
Siberia between Allen and Stolyar following an arts conference that touched on improvised music as a means for transnational communication. Chase’s interactive visual work with the improvising trio NIRUSU III (Chase, Allen, Pearson) has been acclaimed by the LA Weekly as “pushing the edge of audio/visual improv”, and his animated/projected composition 2UIQ was featured last October at the Illuminated Corridor (San Francisco/Oakland) exhibition Mobility. In this appearance at REDCAT, Chase explores the possibility of a dynamic, spontaneously composed visual narrative that includes animated film, vector generated graphics, and electro-acoustic musical improvisation, performed by Chase and Stolyar together.

As a piano improviser, Roman Stolyar has collaborated with musicians from across the globe, including Anatoly Vapirov (Bulgaria), Carl Bergstroem-Nielsen (Denmark), Hans Schuettler, Heinz-Erich Goedecke, Ge-Suk Yeo (Germany), free jazz groups Kieloor Entartet and Day & Taxi (Switzerland), the Cohen family (Israel) and others. He has
collaborated with numerous choreographers such as Nelson Fernandes, Christin Carter, Marina Collard (UK), Colin Connor (USA), Randall Scott (Holland), Torbjorn Sternberg (Sweden) and others. He has released CDs under the labels of Ermatell Records (Novosibirsk), Electroshock Records (Moscow) and Intuitive Records (Denmark). In 2000 Stolyar was chosen as a member of the Russian Composers’ Union. He became a Vice Chairman of Siberian branch of Composers’ Union in 2001 and sits on the Board of Advisors of the International Society for Improvising Music.

Susan Allen has performed and toured with American legend, Dr. Yusef Lateef, SONOR, Composers in Red Sneakers, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Musica Viva, Speculum Musicae, and many orchestras. She has been active in studio recording in the Los Angeles area for Universal, Paramount, and Warner Brothers. She received grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, the Massachusetts Arts Council and the Gaudeamus Foundation. She has lectured internationally on both the harp and music pedagogy and has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her records are on the Flying Fish, Black Saint/Soul Note, 1750 Arch, Meta, Vox, Galaxia, Nonesuch, and Opal/Warner Brothers and Ermatell labels.

Nicholas Chase has received numerous awards for his compositional work, including the Andy Warhol Prize given jointly by the Philadelphia Classical Symphony and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. Chase has been hailed as “brilliant” by Strad Magazine. The Los Angeles Times calls his work “flamboyant, avant-garde…brawling yet taut…the Rite of Spring meets Metallica” and the LA Weekly wrote of his short opera Twenty-two, “the human brain at its most imaginative.” Chase is founder of the LA-based Musical Arts/SoundLaboratory who premiered Yusef Lateef’s String Quartet No. 1 (Bismilah) in collaboration with REDCAT in 2005, and founding director of the the Egg Ensemble, the creative team responsible for the trans-disciplinary serial (The Enigma of Salvador) Dali’s Egg, which has been presented at venues in Hollywood, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Helsinki.

This event is funded in part by a grant from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.